“A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Believing that a company is too big to fail, while the education of the coming generation falters, is an aristocracy of government-by-corporation that cannot last.
“A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Political polarization is not the path to true leadership. When politics refuses to go beyond party at all costs, it remains small, unable to lead. Greatness and leadership is usually found outside the boundaries and comfort of party.
Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Truth is onto itself always, requiring nothing, and hiding from no one. Those that aim to deceive others from where truth lay, are its sworn enemy.
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Lost in a sea of semantics, twisted interpretations of law, and descriptions of medieval-sounding methods of punishment revealed in recently released Bush-era memos justifying torture is, in truth, a betrayal of the very principles that founded a nation.
Let the terrorist deal in terror. America stands or falls on how it abides by a higher standard.
A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
It is the government with something to hide, or thinks itself justified in so doing, that we must fear most.
“…the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Fear is the enemy of reason. Fear invites suspicion, prejudice, division.
Overcoming fear is the path to freedom.
“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
To be ignorant is not bliss, to remain ignorant is not virtue. To be kept ignorant is cruel.
“Why may we not suppose that the great Father of all is pleased with a variety of devotion? And that the greatest offence we can act is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? …I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike, who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree”
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
Did God. the great Father, create the vast universe, in all its splendor and diversity, only to have it reduced to the ravings of small men with closed minds, insisting their own limited vision and flawed belief is the only possible way that is pleasing to God? Is it His desire that in so doing we torture, abuse, and make less than human those who think or believe differently than we?
Can this possibly be what God intended?
It comes in all forms: Fundamentalist Christian, radical Islam, intolerant Secularism.
Faith is a vital component of human happiness, but that is often confused with a belief that one has knowledge of the “one true religion”. It does not exist as long as people are willing to disabuse others in the name of it.
God requires that we be humble. Any religion, or non-religion, is just a flawed worldview trying to make sense of what it ultimately cannot.
God belongs to no religion, sect, or creed. Any such thing is a contrivance of Man. If He is concerned with our petty ranting and raving, it is only to the degree that we would disabuse others in His name.
We have no idea.